Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Then you ask some questions and it turns out that what I mean by “screed” is something that is bleen, croom, and weeq.

Then you ask some more questions about the terms bleen, croom, and weeq.It turns out that those terms mean, “reptile,” “married,” and “bachelor,” respectively.So here’s the disproof:

1.Suppose that X is a screed.Then it would follow that:

2.X is bachelor, and

3.X is a reptile.

4.Bachelors are unmarried, adult human males.So,

5.X is human (by 4) and X is not human (by 3)

Furthermore,

6.X is unmarried (by 4) and X is not married (by 3—reptiles can’t be married.)

7.Contradictions are impossible.Nothing can both have a property and not have it.

8.Nothing contradictory can exist.

9.Therefore, screeds cannot exist.

We just proved a negative.What’s the problem, exactly?Why is it that the urban myth that “you can’t prove a negative” persists, and persists, and persists?

For centuries, nonbelievers have been giving deductive proofs for the impossibility of God that demonstrate that there is no God using a strategy like this.But rather than actually consider any of those attempted disproofs, the widespread practice is to simply declare “Everyone knows that you can’t prove a negative.”That’s complete nonsense.We can and do prove negatives of all sorts—ask any mathematician.How do you think they conclude that some piece of mathematical reasoning is flawed.If I present you with a complicated logical formula like this one:~(~a --> ~b) --> ((~a --> b) --> a)) do you think you can simply declare that it is true because “You can’t prove a negative”?It turns out that this formula is contradictory so we canprove that it must be false.

So if the concept of God is logically contradictory, which many people have argued, then we can prove the negative. For a recent collection of articles purporting to do just that, see Martin and Monnier’s anthology, The Impossibility of God.

25 comments:

I'm not great at this, but I think you haven't proved that screed doesn't exist, I think that you've proved that the proposition or that your assumptions are flawed is absurd (internally inconsistent).

And now I feel a bit foolish, given that when I came back I happened to notice that you were posting from experience, not in the exploratory way i took the post in the first place.

So given that I was wrong anyway...

It seems like "Can't Prove a negative" might be coming from a confused way of looking at "Failing to prove a negative does not affirm the positive". This seems to be a pretty widespread belief, any insight onto why that might be?

Hi Scott. Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure what "posting from experience" means. Bottom line is that we can be deductively certain that no thing exists that fits description that is logically contradictory. No square circles exist, no married bachelors, no four sided triangles, etc.

You're right that there is a widespread mistake of moving from the premise "X hasn't been proven to be false," to concluding "Therefore, it is justified to beleive that X is true." This fallacy is perhaps one of the single most common mistakes I see discussions with thousands of students and others about God. I think people's eagerness to infer the latter from the former is one of several confusions that can't be weeded out of one's thinking without a lot of hard work and dilligent self-analysis. If people don't want to see that error, there's not a lot that can be done to fix it. Nevertheless, I have written about it several times. See these previous posts, all linked on the left hand side of the main page:

More accurately: no known variety of reptiles has the cognitive capability to engage in a marriage contract.....but then when we find those intelligent descendents of velociraptors on the Lost Island that could all change.

I've heard a similar argument expressed as "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." And I thoroughly disagree with this argument as well. Nothing is literally 100% certain, so all "facts" are contingent upon additional evidence for or against them. It seems as if most people understand this for every day facts, but when the subject changes to god, their criteria for proof becomes unreasonable. You can no more prove that there is or isn't a god as you can a unicorn, yet most people don't claim to be agnostic of unicorns.

Up until the time that some evidence is found, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence. That is proof enough of a negative for me.

@Jon - OK I'll grant you the math, but also clarify that math is an abstract concept, while I was referring to more concrete "facts" that exist in the real world, not just our brains. I did not make that clear.

As for the self that has perceptions, can you prove to me that you are a perceiving self and not just an automaton? How do you know you aren't the only perceiving self, with the rest of us automatons? Yes, I realize that is almost an absurd question, but it underlines what I mean by being literally 100% sure of something. At some point, almost everything we take as "fact" has at least a miniscule "leap of faith" to it.

What I gave was just a partial list of the 100% certainties. It is not necessary that I am able to give certainties to all questions, only some questions and be able to give alot of them - enough to be considered a great many. Of this we can surely do right? Now in the God arguments if it can be shown that there are incompatible qualities, then certain certainties can be shown. For example, if we consider the existence of an omni-God to have the quality of omni-benevolence, then that being cannot be evil. Correct?

"posting from experience..." I just meant that as an Associate Professor, you are quite qualified to speak with authority.

And if I might draw on your expertise, could you recommend a good book or lecture series on Logic or Logical Argumentation that someone might enjoy reading if he didn't have to read it. As interesting subject as it is, life is too short to read most textbooks for fun.

It seems to me that there is an assumption in your proof, tu wit:4. Bachelors are unmarried, adult human males. This assumes a closed class that is finite...but is it? Unmarried human male adolescents would by definition be batchelors also...the term 'batchelor' cannot defined solely as adult, therefore it would seem that the proof does not hold based on #4 committing the Fallacy of Accident.

Dear Anon...my original post referred to the line: ‘4. Bachelors are unmarried, adult human males’, emphasis on “adult”...what about a 17 yr. old, never married male adolescent? Is he not a bachelor? If not, then what? Additionally, The Oxford English Dictionary, which is perhaps somewhat more rapidly updated than M-W includes the term: “bachelor girl: an independent unmarried young woman”. The other meanings are: “ a male bird or mammal that is prevented from breeding by a dominant male and 2: a person who holds a first degree from a university or other academic institution”. If the wording originally were “All unmarried human males are bachelors”, there is no problem from the ‘adult’ standpoint. In the original sentence, the term “male”, on the other hand, is definitely a problem in the second meaning, and certainly with regard to a bachelor girl...or the animals --the point is that precision must be observed with not only the logical portion of the argument, but also the verbiage. The author creates a finite set “ (All) bachelors are unmarried, adult human males.” If one exception may be found that does not meet the stated criterion, then the Fallacy of Accident, also known as a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid , or denying the exception has been committed. The objection stands.

No. Not sure why the definition of Bachelor is so difficult for you to grasp. If the definition is an adult, not a male.

Additionally, as far as I can tell your "Bachelor girl" is also irrelevant, if it were in fact including women the original "bachelor" would not need the additional 'girl' in order to clarify a female.

The other entries for bachelor are obviously red-herrings, when a word is used in a specific context with a purposeful meaning it's rather irrelevant that the word can mean something else in other contexts with other references. It seems to me you'd just as readily argue against "The Redsocks pitcher has thrown seven strikes this inning" because obviously containers which hold water cannot throw a ball. It's absurd.

So, quite frankly, the only thing you've asked is any unmarried male a bachelor? Simply no, by definition. It seems you just wish to incorrect classify things to make a counterexample.

The only point of contention is under which age does one become an adult - which is completely irrelevant because regardless of which age is chosen the proof still works.

Anon...I took the liberty of checking with Merriam-Webster online and found the following:"Main Entry: Bachelor-noun Etymology: Middle English bacheler, from Anglo-French Date: 14th century

1: a young knight who follows the banner of another 2: a person who has received what is usually the lowest degree conferred by a 4-year college, university, or professional school "bachelor of arts"; also : the degree itself received a bachelor of laws 3 a: an unmarried man b: a male animal (as a fur seal) without a mate during breeding time"...

Funny you should mention it, it does actually have pretty much the same definition as the OED, except that you left out the parts you didn’t want to consider (I can understand the ‘young knight’ deletion). I draw your attention to #2 in particular: “A PERSON”. A person may be female, and they have been known to hold bachelor degrees.A set has been created, tu wit: Bachelors are unmarried, adult human males

In setting up the Fallacy of Accident, it is but necessary to show the existence of ONE exception, and the statement is rendered false. The sentence would pass muster if it had said:” All unmarried human males are bachelors”, it allows for exceptions. The original sentence is false. The posting stands.

One of things which annoy me the most is when a religious person says "and you can't prove Gods NOT real." In which I say "you can't prove the invisible pink elephant that lives in my house isn't real either."

Now if I told you I saw invisible pink elephants living in my house you would say I was nuts.

When a religious person says they believe in an invisible God, then they have FAITH.

I'm not reading the comments, so I apologize if I repeat anything. One concern I have in both examples of negative proofs is that they depend on (i) analytic truths in the former and (ii) logical proof in the second. The logic does not make the world, since I can just as well make up any statement following modus ponens which could be absolute nonsense. The test is whether it is an actual truth. Therefore, one can logical prove or disprove God, given their system of logic, premises, etc. The question for that is whether it is anything of the natural world.

With (i) the issue is, like for (ii), whether analytic truths are of the actual world. We can say an unmarried bachelor is an analytic truth, but it's dependent on the linguistic system. That doesn't seem to get us any further than the logic since ultimately it appears we're just talking about abstract ideas for which the language is attempting to articulate. If that is the case, an analytic truth is like saying we have a logical tautology. We can even apply it to the real world, e.g., "Joe is a bachelor, therefore Joe is an unmarried man," but is that truth one of the world of merely a construction of logic applied to the world (ad hoc)? Joe, in this example, is only a bachelor or an unmarried man, inasmuch as we perceive him as such. It's dependent on many things we assume to hold true for the logical relation to hold true, but it need not be any more apart of the world than imaginary numbers need to be apart of the world simply because Maxwell's electromagnetism uses them as a means of conveying the electric and magnetic forces. Do we say imaginary numbers exist in the world because of that? Surely not, but it does show we can apply them in the real world.

Therefore, my concern is whether or not you can prove a negative outside of the realm of a deductive system of logic for which we can state such crisp and clear boundaries such as tautologies and mathematical truths. I'm one to motion for inductive truths in reality and proving a negative in that regard is a whole new ball game from the easy analytic or logical truths as demonstrated in the examples you provided.

One last thing to add to the conclusion, the kind of "proving the negative" we would derive from an inductive proof would be that of confidence (many question if induction provides proofs at all, however). I cannot prove or disprove the God of the Bible, but I can show it to be a very unlikely truth, given the way reality (nature) works (i.e., from our given knowledge set of the world). This kind of "proving the negative" is far weaker than the kind of proof we look for in the deductive logics as presented in the blog, but they seem to be how we make inferences in reality. Likewise, it also shows that we need a high confidence in believing in a God as well, given our knowledge of the world. But how one would derive that kind of inference opens up a whole other can of worms.

Thanks for your comments Bryan Goodrich. Lots of interesting ideas. You seem to be downplaying the significance of the fact that many descriptions of God are logically incoherent as if that doesn't really tell us anything about the issue. Claiming that the logical problem is just one of definition within a linguistic system suggests that we've got something else to fall back on. Look, if a description of an entity turns out to be unintelligible and riddled with contradictions, as a long tradition of deductive atheologists have argued, it's not like that just a minor speed bump for the believer. That means that the thing that they are claiming to exist is logically impossible. Which other "linguistic system" do you propose we use to describe this fantasy? One where the law of non-contradiction doesn't apply and there's no difficulty asserting P and ~P or that circles really aren't circles and bachelors really aren't bachelors? Logic is the bedrock of any sort of intelligible discourse. People often talk as if we can just drop it at will like changing from English to French. No, contradictions are ruled out at the most fundamental level in all languages. At the very least, the substantial burden of proof is on any believer to explain how it is the thing they believe in exists, but it defies the very fabric of reality and logic, and how believing in it can be rational. Until then, the deductive atheologist is perfectly justified in rejecting such claims as incoherent.

As for inductive proofs: Certainly that's another way to build the argument. But notice I haven't said those aren't possible. Deductive disproofs are one of several approaches to the question.

I do not really disagree with what you say. What I am getting at is that not all definitions of God (or anything for that matter) are so clean cut to say we can evaluate it by simple deductive logic. To prove a negative in such cases is rather easy. Like the reductio, all you need to do is show one value to be inconsistent, and you get the other. What if there are more possible truth values? As soon as you lose the excluded middle you have to show many more negatives to claim the positive. Certainly I am not saying ~A isn't a valid claim, but ~A may consist of X, Y and Z. Of course, all that requires is showing Z is absurd, Y is absurd and X is absurd, then we claim A. What if there's more? Apparently any n set of possible truth values needs n-1 reductio proofs! What if n is infinite? It's like a falsification problem. Can we disprove the claim that a box contains X? That's as easy as looking in the box and seeing if it is there. But what if the box is extremely big or infinitely large? Not only does it become an accessibility problem, but possibly impossible to do a "reductio" kind of proof. My point being that we need to be very creative to negatively do a negative proof (not saying it can't be done, depending on the system of mathematics you use to do it).

Back on point, I do not discount the fact that if God is clearly defined to be contradictory, we can easily identify that it cannot be true if the world is such to be logically sound. But does that reach the scope of all definitions of God, or even most? On what criteria are the definitions measured? We all like to say it is absurd to think unicorns or Santa Clause is real, but is there clearly something in their definitions that is contradictory? How do we prove the negative in this case? Searching an inaccessible or infinite box for how they do not fit into it? Unlikely, but that is why induction proves useful. If magic gnomes cannot be shown absurd by mere deduction (and definition), how can God be demonstrated to be as such any better?

Sure, you can form whatever ideas you want in your mind--unicorns, Bigfoot, a million dollars in your checking account, a hot supermodel girlfriend, but they aren't real. And fantasizing about them all you want or believing in them as fervently as you want won't change that.

This is all very fun but it's an age old argument which has been solved a thousand times over and it's a natural fallacy. Let's examine a word from the real dictionary; "Run". Run has one of the longest definitions in the English language, and if we were to use this logic to evaluate each, then the word cannot exist because "to run" as in sports is not the same "to run" as in computer programming because one is the rapid movement of a human's legs and the other is the process of on off switches which by definition have no legs by which to run.

So to say that the word (sorry forgot it already) cannot be a term for a reptile and a term for a bachelor is also a logical fallacy since language has such massive variances such as slang, conjugations, etc.

I like reading your blog when I get the time, but, and this is not meant as a personal attack, it's old stuff. Nothing new and most of it already solved. I love debates, I love civil conversations, but that also requires knowning both sides of the topic. There are some really good arguments out there now that the great minds are hashing out, let's talk about some of those.

Kailya, thanks for reading my blog and for posting. But some of your input isn't really helpful. First, if by "natural fallacy" you mean "naturalistic fallacy," you need to look that one up; you're really off the mark, I think. You've frequently accused me of rambling, being unknowledgeable, or otherwise expressed your frustration with my lack of insight. It's hardly fair to accuse me of not addressing the recent literature--I have regularly cited, quoted, mentioned, or responded to a long list of references from the last 20 years in the philosophical literature. If there's some vast literature out there that you think I"m missing, I'm all ears. Maybe it's all the shelves of Christian apologetic drivel at the Bible store you've got in mind. You're right, I don't read much of that stuff. After looking through lots of it and trying unsuccessfully to find clear, thoughtful arguments that weren't just blatant appeals to authority (look up that fallacy too) I have given up. William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Peter Van Inwagen are all important and influential philosophers and Christians. You will find that I have responded to all of them frequently here.

Finally, you're point about the various definitions of words is interesting. But here's the problem. It sounds like you are suggesting that it will be impossible to every disprove any notion of God because the definition keeps changing or different people mean different things by it. Ok, fine. Let's take the one account of God that figures centrally in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions--the God that is all powerful, all knowing, and all good. I have gone through a long list of problems with that definition of God here, and there is a vast literature out there addressing problems in that account (that I don't think you're familiar with). That notion of God has not proven to be intelligible. If you've got some other account of a being that you think is worthy of the name and that we should all think about, then we can talk about that one too. But the problems with the mainstream account of God can't just be waved away with personal attacks and vague allusions as you're doing.

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Atheism

Author:

Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.